A variety of distinctive measurable biometric characteristics may be used to authenticate a person's identity which may be used to allow access to a secure location, to validate a financial transaction, to confirm a command related to for example military operations, or to perform other activities. Personal identification systems may compare physiological characteristics which may include DNA, fingerprints, face recognition, the veins of the palm, a palm print, iris recognition, and hand geometry. These means of identification are in some cases reliable because of the uniqueness of each of these characteristics to a specific individual. However, the accuracy of identification is limited by the precision of the apparatus used and the identification methodology employed. Commonly, identification methods may develop digital templates encoded from features of acquired patterns and images based on the physical characteristics of a person. Using statistical algorithms and iterative comparisons of these features a narrowing of probabilities may be found to establish an accurate match for verification. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,544 specifies a distributed biometrical identification system that receives input of biometrical data such as fingerprint and photographic data and links this information with remote file servers within the identification system to compare the biometrical data with stored biometrical data in order to determine a person's identity. In FR Patent No 2754369, a method and apparatus for personal identification by measuring hand configurations and comparing this measurement to previously measured stored parameters is disclosed. The use of hand geometry is also described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,961,450 that discloses a user identification method that uses a sensor to identify the presence of living matter and an optical system that reflects light from a person's hand onto a mirror and a 50% mirror. The mirrors within the optical system then reflect the light to a photo receiver (CTD matrix) that is optically mated with the surface of the hand and thus the contour of the hand is scanned and captured on the CTD matrix. The CTD matrix has a known number of matrix elements, and the signal from each matrix element is converted into a digital mode and entered in a frame memory unit. An image of the person's hand is scanned and the number of CTD matrix elements are used to calculate the hand geometry. The calculated hand geometry is converted into an identification code that is stored and compared to a scanned image of the hand and calculated hand geometry obtained at a later time. A person may be identified if the later obtained identification code is within an acceptable error rate of the stored identification code. The described optical system is very specialized equipment that must be properly maintained to align the mirrors and CTD matrix to reduce distortion and ensure that a person is properly identified. In contrast to these approaches embodiments of the present invention do not require specialized identification equipment, and instead provide a precision method for the identification of a person using a mobile device having a camera and the dimensions of a full-scale object as described herein.